ACM SIGPLAN history of programming languages conference BASIC language summary

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code or BASIC was originally developed by T. E. Kurtz and J. G. Kemeny at Dartmouth College in 1963-1964. The original version consisted of 14 statement constructs. BASIC was one of several languages operating in a general purpose time-sharing system also developed at Dartmouth. The simple user commands, numbering about 8 or 10, have since become associated with the BASIC language.

A BASIC program is created via the NEW command, listed by the LIST command, edited by a DELETE command, executed by the RUN command, and saved by the SAVE command. Previously saved programs are retrieved from their file by entering OLD and the desired program name.